


One Way Or The Other

by jeta



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers IW Spoilers, Corny, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Other, Possible traces of Stony, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Reunion Fic, Slow-Motion Emotions, emotional collapse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-07 18:19:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14676741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeta/pseuds/jeta
Summary: He tried to comfort himself with the fact that once he landed, he would know who had survived and who hadn't. At least he would know, one way or the other.





	One Way Or The Other

Tony cratered onto his own landing pad at the Tower. The sky was gray in a way that could be dusk or dawn or just the way the world looked now. The city below was quiet in a creepy, Stephen King book you never ever want to re-read way. 

No great mystery why. 

The stillness should have been frightening. Sickening, really. Somehow it was a comfort instead. Felt like space, at least. He wasn’t thinking about it yet. The Why. For the first time in his life, he was going to let himself be too tired for the why. He just wanted to get inside and sleep. It had been…. God, he had no idea. He and Nebula had been travelling for, God, at least a month. He’d slept… maybe nine or ten times, since the — 

It didn’t bear thinking about. 

Nebula was gone. She had gotten him here, dropped him in the vicinity of Earth’s atmosphere, and the suit had done the rest. She was gone in a blink, not that Tony cared much. He might care later, but not just now. Now Tony was going to sleep. For ages and ages. Maybe forever. And then he was going to sleep more. And beyond that…

Well, beyond that, he would do whatever it was people did after Giving Up.

After twenty minutes of pure stalling, surrounded by questions he couldn’t bear having answered, frozen in fear as faces and voices rose up from his memories to greet him, faces and voices he may or may not have killed but (one way or the other) he certainly didn’t save, he forced his metal-shod feet to move him indoors.

… Nothing registered until he was standing outside the door to his lab. And then it was there like a stab wound. The presence of someone else. 

There was someone in his lab. With the needle on the record player.

 

*

 

Steve. 

Steve Rogers was sitting there, in Tony’s lab, with the record player going on and on and on, in the corner. Tony had the strangest urge to shoot it into oblivion, to blanket this too-familiar room in stillness and silence.

Everything was… everything was… still completely and utterly FUBAR, but Steve was here.  _ Here _ , not just  _ still present on the Earth  _ here, but here, right here, in Tony’s lab, at Tony’s own damn desk. Reading paperwork.

_ Does not compute, Jarvis _ , Tony told his mental AI.

_ I know, Sir,  _ returned Tony’s memory of Jarvis’ calm, collected voice.  _ If you would be so good as to go and gather more data for me, I can analyze _ — 

“Hi,” said Tony, knocking against the doorframe with his knuckles without another second of thought.

In retrospect, maybe he could have taken a moment or two to construct something more urbanely witty than  _ Hi _ , or at least whipped out a camera to record Steve’s hilariously huge startled jump, and his flabbergasted jaw drop, and his instantaneous, no-doubt-involuntary Tony-Stark-is-Still-Alive beaming, radiant, warmer-than-sunshine smile, for posterity.

_ (Posterity —  _ the word made Tony’s gut lurch).

“You’re back!” exclaimed Steve, hiding his smile by rubbing his jaw.

Tony flinched.

“I see you’re still of sound mind, with the ability to make basic logical deductions,” he replied, his feet locking him in place in the doorway, unable to move forward or back. He glanced around the rest of the lab, but it was empty. They were alone.

Steve jumped to his feet, and Tony stole a glance at him, getting first good in-person look at the man who had left him in a broken suit, in Siberia, in the freezing cold. 

Still the same old Steve, almost. New facial hair, new blue jeans, new t-shirt — almost new; it was a white tee-shirt with a — no way, no way was Steve wearing  _ that  _ shirt, the one that Tony himself had last worn the day when —  _ This isn’t a hug, kid; we’re not there yet _ — 

It didn’t bear thinking about. But it  _ was  _ that shirt. 

Tony forced himself to stare Steve in the eye, and not break eye contact. Yeah, same old dirty bastard. New brightness in Steve’s same old blue eyes, new intensity in his same old warm smile. Tony shivered at the sight. He’d seen  _ this  _ Steve in tiny fragmented glimpses before, just here and there —  _ please tell me nobody kissed me, you guys ever tried Shawarma  _ Steve-face.  _ Pregnant? ...I’m so sorry, Tony. I didn’t know  _ Steve-face.

It was Relieved Steve. It was — dare he even hypothesize it? — it was Happy Steve. 

The smile should have faded by now. But everytime Tony looked at Steve, it was still there.

The ghost of the nerve flares caused by a failing arc reactor pulsed through Tony’s chest, sending a spike of pain through his whole body. It did that at times. Randomly. Phantom pain, born from hope for a better world, phantom pain for a time gone by. Tony folded his arms over his chest, rolled his head to the side and lowered his brows. 

“How did you get in here?” he demanded.

Steve leaned back against the desk, mirroring Tony’s crossed arms, and almost didn’t smile. “Good, old-fashioned forced entry, believe it or not.”

That was it. 

That was when Tony finally processed the tune warbling from the record player, when his brain at last identified it as The Beatles, as the end of  _ I’m So Tired  _ and the beginning of  _ Blackbird.  _ The opening guitar riff was unmistakable.

So Thanos had ended half of civilization, and Captain America was finally getting into the Beatles. End of times.

And somehow Tony finally stopped caring about bygones. He had  _ told _ Cap, God, he had told him a  _ thousand  _ times that he would love The Beatles once he finally gave in and gave them a try; he had had to tell Steve a billion times, because Steve was ornery and stubborn about the dumbest damn things,  _ EVERYONE loves the Beatles, Steve; it’s not a controversial opinion; why do you have to fight me on the simplest things _ , but no, that Steve was unhappy, and didn’t trust Tony’s opinion on anything, and never valued what Tony had to say, and now here was New Steve, doing  _ work _ , listening to Tony’s record player, in the Tower where Tony had built a space for them all to live, commissioned whole floors where they could live together in central Manhattan thousands of feet above the ground, with a vintage 1941 record player in Steve’s would-be room, with hundreds of record lined up in order of cultural importance, a room old Steve had never even entered, because Steve I prefer Brooklyn Rogers, Steve thanks but no thanks, I’ll be fine on my own Rogers; Steve I have more important things to do and more Freedom to maintain than you could possibly help me with Rogers, that Steve didn’t need Tony, but this Steve, this slightly new Steve,  _ this  _ Steve had clearly ransacked that room while Tony was gone to outer space, and stolen Tony’s cat shirt, and this Steve had spent the last God knew how long at  _ Tony’s own desk _ , listening to the White Album; the universe had half-ended and Steve was just sitting there, wearing the cat shirt, and reading through hell knew what stupid paperwork, and…

And Tony loved  _ Blackbird _ . He loved that song so much.

“I can’t do this,” said Tony, sinking to the floor, shaking.

Steve was there in an instant, a cautious hand reaching for Tony’s shoulder. Tony batted it away, out of habit.

He regretted it as soon as he did.

“He died in my arms, Steve, and I —”

Tony’s voice broke. He leaned his head back against the doorframe, fighting so damn hard not to cry in front of Captain Freaking America, and feeling completely and totally helpless. Numb had been a lie, but it had been so much better than  _ this _ .

“I’m so sorry, Tony,” Steve whispered. 

Instead of answering, Tony depowered his suit for the first time in a month, gingerly pulling himself from its metal embrace. He was with Steve now, and Steve would protect him to the fullest extent possible if something bad showed up. Steve would die for him — for Tony. Just like all the others had. Tony shook his head. He should have bit the word back, but all the bitter, hellish pain of what he’d been living through in the last month slipped out, sealed in a single syllable:

“...Why?”

Steve sat down on the floor two feet away from Tony and shrugged in a way that somehow told Tony everything — that Steve was living through that very same hell, that it was tearing him apart six ways to Sunday too, but — but somehow,  _ somehow _ , Steve had gotten there, to the part where there was light gleaming at the end of the tunnel. It was right there in those tear-crowded old eyes, in that flickering Steve-smile that Tony couldn’t and hadn’t ever been able to decipher.

Tony’s gaze went to his own hands, which were still shaking.

“You’re still here,” said Steve, reaching out one more time, this time for Tony’s left wrist, which Tony had been massaging manically in an effort to disguise the shaking. “That’s why.”

“It’s not enough,” Tony breathed, the words just barely joining his exhalation.

“Yes it is,” said Steve immediately. “I thought you were gone, but now you’re here. And that means we still have a team, Tony. We have you and me. I don’t know how, but that’s going to be enough, one way or the other.”

Tony’s teeth ground together so hard they made a sharp sliding sound, and his fists clenched so tight his fingernails bit into his palms, and his head started to pound and his chest flared with pain and his body curled in on itself into he was crying into his knees, and silent involuntary sobs were shaking his whole frame.

Steve just held onto Tony’s wrist. Forever. The old rat bastard.

Tony cracked one eye open, and just arched an eyebrow at Steve, one side of his mouth quirking up in an involuntary smile. “I… am really  _ glad  _ you’re here, Cap,” he said at last, then cleared his throat and said, “ _ Hi, Steve. It’s me, Tony, Tony Stark. Nice to see you again _ . When you recount this moment anecdotally, pretend  _ that’s  _ what I said first, and that I didn’t just walk in here and collapse and cry my eyes out like a little girl, okay?”

“Fat chance,” Steve smirked, wrapping Tony in a bear hug that made Tony realize he had been freezing cold for months and months and months, and was just now remembering the word  _ warm  _ again.

Tony reached out and returned Old-New Steve’s embrace. … One way or the other, it was still Steve.

He could find a way to live with that.


End file.
